This is the changelog for the next release of QGIS - version 2.14 ‘Essen’.
Essen was the host city to our developer meet ups in October 2012 and 2014.

長期サポート

This is a special release since it is designated an ‘LTR’ (Long Term Release).
LTR releases will be supported with backported bug fixes for one year, and
will be in permanent feature freeze (i.e. no new features will be added, only
bug fixes and trivial updates). Note that we are in discussion to extend the
term of our LTR releases to two years, but for technical reasons we will not do
this until QGIS 3.2.

The purpose of LTR releases is to provide a stable and less frequently changing
platform for enterprises and organizations that do not want to deal with
updating user skills, training materials etc. more than once per year. The
success of the LTR is very much down to you, our beloved users - we need your
support to help funding bug fixes and making sure in your support contracts
with support providers specify that any bug fixes done on your behalf are
applied to the LTR branch as well as our normal development branch.

If an LTR is important to you, please consider also directly supporting the
QGIS project, or encourage your commercial provider to use LTR as a basis for
your enterprise solution so that everyone may benefit from a stable platform
that is being continuously improved and refined. Note that for users and
organizations that like to live on the frontier, our regular four-monthly
releases will continue unabated.

QGIS 2.14 ‘Essen’ の新機能

If you are upgrading from QGIS 2.8 (our previous LTR version) you will
find a great many new features in this release. We encourage you to
peruse the changelogs for the intermediate non LTR
2.10 and
2.12 releases as
this QGIS 2.14 includes all features published in those releases too.
Note that 2.14 first enters the regular package repositories and will
not immediately replace 2.8 in the LTR package repositories. That will
happen when 2.16 is released.

Whenever new features are added to software they introduce the
possibility of new bugs - if you encounter any problems with this
release, please file a ticket on the QGIS Bug
Tracker.

謝辞

We would like to thank the developers, documenters, testers and all the
many folks out there who volunteer their time and effort (or fund people
to do so). From the QGIS community we hope you enjoy this release! If
you wish to donate time, money or otherwise get involved in making QGIS
more awesome, please wander along to qgis.org and
lend a hand!

QGIS is supported by donors and sponsors. A current list of donors who
have made financial contributions large and small to the project can be
seen on our donors
list.
If you would like to become an official project sponsor, please visit
our sponsorship
page for
details. Sponsoring QGIS helps us to fund our six-monthly developer
meetings, maintain project infrastructure and fund bug fixing efforts. A
complete list of current sponsors is provided below - our very great
thank you to all of our sponsors!

QGIS is Free software and you are under no obligation to pay anything to
use it - in fact we want to encourage people far and wide to use it
regardless of what your financial or social status is - we believe
empowering people with spatial decision making tools will result in a
better society for all of humanity. If you are able to support QGIS, you
can

The strpos function behaviour has been altered, so that no match now
results in a “0” value and a non-zero value means a match at the
specified character position. In older QGIS versions, a “-1” value would
mean no-match and other return values represented the character position
- 1.

Project files from earlier QGIS versions will need to be updated to
reflect this change.

QGIS 2.14 has gained finer control over the placement of north arrows,
scale bars and copyright notices on the main map canvas. You can now
precisely set the position of these elements using a variety of units
(including millimeters, pixels and percent).

Prior to each release, we hold a paid bugfixing programme where we fund
developers to clean up as many bugs as possible. We have decided to
start including a report back on the paid bugfixing programme as part of our
changelog report. Note that this list is not exhaustive.

The field calculator can now be used to update feature geometries
using the result of a geometric expression. This is a handy shortcut to
do operations such as apply a buffer to a group of selected features,
and together with all the newly added geometry functions in 2.14 makes
for a very handy way to manipulate your geometries!

relate: performs a DE-9IM geometry relation by either returning
the DE-9IM representation of the relationship between two geometries,
or by testing whether the DE-9IM relationship matches a specified
pattern.

the make_point function now accepts optional z and m values, and
a new make_point_m function has been added for creation of PointM
geometries.

m and z functions for retrieving the m and z values from a
point geometry

new make_line and make_polygon functions, for creation of
line and polygon geometries from a set of points

reverse, for reversing linestrings

eval function, which can evaluate a string as though it is an
expression of its own

translate function, for translating geometries by an x/y offset

darker and lighter functions, which take a color argument and
make it darker or lighter by a specified amount

radians and degrees: for converting angles between radians
and degrees

point_on_surface: returns a point on the surface of a geometry

exterior_ring: returns the exterior ring for a polygon geometry

is_closed: returns true if a linestring is closed

new geometry accessor functions: geometry_n (returns a specific
geometry from within a collection), interior_ring_n (returns an
interior ring from within a polygon)

num_geometries: returns number of geometries inside a collection

num_rings: returns number of rings in a polygon geometry object

num_interior_rings: returns number of interior rings in a polygon

nodes_to_points, for converting every node in a geometry to a
multipoint geometry

segments_to_lines, for converting every segment in a geometry to
a multiline geometry

closest_point: returns closest point in a geometry to a second
geometry

shortest_line: returns the shortest possible line joining two
geometries

nodes_to_points and segments_to_lines are intended for use with
geometry generator symbology, eg to allow use of m and z values for
nodes/lines with data defined symbology.

その他の改善点:

geometries and features can now be used in conditional functions. For
instance, this allows expressions like
casewhen$geometrythen...else... and
casewhenget_feature(...)then...else...

When using either the merge attribute values or merge features tool,
there are additional summary statistics available which can be used to
set the resultant attribute values. These include Q1, Q3, inter-quartile
ranges, majority and minority values, and number of unique values,
amongst others.

The identify tool is now able to show any z or m value present in the
identified features. If the feature is a line or polygon, the tool will
show the vertex number and x/y/z/m for the nearest vertex to the
identified point. The identify tool now also shows the number of parts
and part number for collections.

In QGIS 2.14 the handling of various options regarding distance units,
area units and coordinate display have been unified, simplified, and
moved to Project Properties. This change brings numerous benefits,
including:

The coordinate format specified in Project Properties is consistently
used whenever a coordinate is displayed to the user, including the
identify tool results and the status bar display.

The setting for distance and area units in Project Properties is
respected for all distance and area calculations, including the
measure tool, identify results, and use of the $area, $length
and $perimeter functions.

Additional area units have been added, including square yards,
acres, hectares and more.

Additional angular units have been added to the angle measurement
tool, including rotations, minutes of arc and seconds of arc.

It’s now possible to show the coordinates in latitude and longitude
in the status bar even when using a projected CRS.

The QGIS Browser is a filesystem, OGC Web Services and Database
Connection panel that lets you easily drag and drop any layer from the
aforementioned sources into your map canvas (or into the DB Manager
window). Two useful new improvements were added for this release:

Paths can be selectively hidden from the browser panel - this is
useful to declutter your sources list and focus only on relevant
directories.

Load projects directly from the browser - now you can drag and
drop a whole project into the QGIS map canvas and it will be loaded.

QGIS will now cache WMS GetCapabilities requests so that on
subsequent use response times will be quicker when using that service.
By default the cache period is 24 hours, but you can adjust this in the
Network tab of the QGIS Settings dialog.

The delimited text provider now supports curved WKT strings, and the
memory provider (eg “temporary scratch” layers) has gained full support
for curved geometries. Additionally, if QGIS has been built using GDAL
versions 2.0 and up then QGIS will fully support curved geometries in
supported file types (eg GML files).

The ability to use the QGIS Authentication Manager introduced in 2.12
has been extended to the PostGIS provider. This allows connecting to
Postgres using basic or PKI authentication, with the credentials stored
in the QGIS configuration. The new Postgres provider authentication can
also be used in the DB manager.

Dynamic SQL queries can now be used on any kind of vector layers that
QGIS is able to load, even if it the layer format itself has no support
for SQL queries!

A new kind of vector layer called “virtual layer” is now available for
that purpose. These allow you to create a virtual layer by defining a
query (including support for aggregates and joins) from other layers in
your project. The resultant layer will be a live, dynamic view of the
query result, so any changes to the source layers will be automatically
and immediately reflected in the virtual layer!

The supported SQL dialect is SQLite with Spatialite functions. QGIS
expression functions can also be used in queries. Any kind of vector
layers can be accessed in the query, including multiple layers from
different data providers to make joins.

Support for virtual layers has also been added to DB Manager as well as
to the Processing toolbox where a new ‘Execute SQL’ tool is available.

For vector and raster files, QGIS relies on the GDAL/OGR library. It means
that nearly any file format that can be opened by GDAL or OGR can be
directly opened in QGIS.
Until now, some file extensions were not added in the GDAL or OGR
file selector, resulting in users believing that QGIS could not open or
handle those file formats. To minimise this problem, some new extensions
have been added to GDAL and OGR file selector filters:

When using a PostGIS 2.2 instance, QGIS now uses the
ST_RemoveRepeatedPoints function instead of the ST_SnapToGrid function
to process server-side simplification, as described by Paul
Ramsey.

This method will decrease the number of vertices of the geometries that
QGIS needs to download from the server, which will increase rendering
speed and save bandwith between QGIS and the PostgreSQL server.

This makes it possible to do things like save a geometryless table WITH
a geometry type, so that geometries can then be manually added to rows.
Previously this was only possible to do in QGIS by resorting to dummy
joins or other workarounds.

Additionally, options have been added for forcing the output file to be
multi type, or include a z-dimension.

A new form widget is now available. It is named “External resource” and
it allows a more complete handling of attributes assigned to file paths
storing. Here is a complete summary of the widget features:

You can set an extension filter to force the storing of fixed
file formats. If a filter is set, the file selector will only show
file names that are relevant to the filter (it is still possible to
select any file by using ‘*’ character in the search field). Filter
syntax is the same than Qt widget
QFileDialog::getOpenFileName.

You can set a default path. Each time a user triggers the widget,
a file selector will open at the default path (if set). If no default
path has been set, the file selector will use the last path selected
from an “External resource” widget. If the widget has never been
used, the file selector defaults to opening on the project path.

You can define and set relative path storing. Relative path
storing will allow you to save only the part of the path which is
after the default path (if default path is set) or the current
project path. This is particularly useful when you want to save long
paths into limited size attributes (like text attributes for
Shapefiles which are limited to 254 characters), or for creating
self-contained project and data file archives for distribution.

Another new feature to make the widget easier to use is that file
paths can now be displayed as hyperlinks. Clicking the hyperlink
will directly open the linked file from QGIS. You can configure this
option to display the full path of the file or only its file name.
The file will be opened using the default handler for that file
format from your operating system.

You can also use a URL instead of a file path. The widget will
interpret it as a URL and you will be able to open the linked web
page directly in your default web browser.

You can choose to store directory paths instead of file paths.

There is an integrated document viewer in this widget. You can
use it to display pictures or webpages directly into QGIS. The file
chooser for the integrated viewer will benefit from all the above
mentioned options.

For more information on configuration options, you can use the tool tips
of the configuration dialog box.

The main aim of this new widget is to fix and improve the two existing
‘File name’ and ‘Photo’ widgets, and replace them with a single unified
widget. For the moment, you can still use the old widgets but they will
be deprecated and removed for QGIS 3.0. We recommend to switch your
projects to use the new ‘External Resource’ widget now.

This adds the possibility to manage data on a normalised relational
database in N:M (many to many) relations. On the relation editor in a
form, the tools to add, delete, link and unlink also work on the linking
table if a relation is visualized as a N:M relation.

Configuration is done through the fields tab where on the relation a
second relation can be chosen (if there is a suitable relation in terms
of a second relation on the linking table).

制限:

QGIS is not a database management system.

It is based on assumptions about the underlying database system. In
particular:

it expects an ONDELETECASCADE or similar measure on the second
relation

it does not take care of setting the primary key when adding features.
Either users need to be instructed to set them manually or - if it’s a
database derived value - the layers need to be in transaction mode

This feature was funded by République et canton de Neuchâtel, Ville de
Pully, Ville de Vevey

In this placement mode, point label candidates are generated following
ideal cartographic placement rules, eg label placements are prioritised
in the order:

右上

左上

右下

左下

中央右

中央左

やや右上

やや左下

(respecting the guidelines from Krygier and Wood (2011) and other
cartographic master works)

Placement priority can also be set for an individual feature using a
data defined list of prioritised positions. This also allows for only
certain placements to be used, so eg for coastal features you could
prevent labels being placed over the land.

When this setting is active, the label distance applies from the bounds
of the rendered symbol for a point instead of the point itself. It is
especially useful when the symbol size is not fixed, eg if it is set by
a data defined size or when using different symbols in a categorised
renderer.

Note that this setting is only available with the new Cartographic point
label placement mode.

A new control for setting a label’s “z-index” has been added to the
labeling properties dialog. This control (which also accepts
data-defined overrides for individual features) determines the order in
which labels are rendered. Label layers with a higher z-index are
rendered on top of labels from a layer with a lower z-index.

Additionally, the logic has been tweaked so that if 2 labels have
matching z-indexes, then:

if they are from the same layer, a smaller label will always be drawn
above a larger label

if they are from different layers, the labels will be drawn in the
same order as the layers themselves (ie respecting the order set in
the legend)

Diagrams can also have their z-index set (but not data defined) so that
the order of labels and diagrams can be controlled.

Note that this does NOT allow labels to be drawn below the features
from other layers, it just controls the order in which labels are drawn
on top of your map.

Previously, only the point feature itself was treated as an obstacle for
label candidates. If a large or offset symbol was used for the point,
then labels were allowed to overlap this symbol without incurring the
obstacle cost.

Now, the actual size and offset of the rendered symbol are considered
when detecting whether a label collides with a point feature. The result
is that QGIS now avoids drawing labels over point symbols in more
circumstances.

You can now define custom paths that should be used for QGIS to find
composer templates. This means that you can for example put a bunch of
templates in a network share and give your users access to that folder
in addition to the local ones that exist on their own system. To manage
the composer template search paths, look in
Settings->Options->Composer

The Composer Manager has gained support for managing multiple
compositions at the same time. You can now open or delete multiple
compositions at once by using the Ctrl key and selecting multiple
compositions from the list.

Support for the new authentication system has been added to the plugin
manager. This allows users to apply authentication configurations for
connections to plugin repositories, and system administrators to create
authenticated access to plugin repositories and/or the download packages
of plugins.

To guarantee the long-term stability of the processing module, a new
testing framework has been introduced.

Processing geo-algorithms are executed after every change which hits the
QGIS source code and the result is compared to a control dataset to
guarantee correct behavior. This gives an immediate feedback about
possible regressions.

It is possible - and desired - that more tests are added. You can read
more about how to
participate.

The simplified interface has been removed, and a new and more
user-friendly system of managing providers has been added. The algorithm
search functionality now also searches in providers that are not active,
and suggests activating them.

QGIS 2.14 Processing now incorporates v.net GRASS modules (only for
GRASS7). Those modules are a set of algorithms that perform on graph
line vector layers (networks). A
graph is a set of
vertices (or nodes or points) linked together with a set of edges (or
arcs or lines). The set of edges is often called a network.

Thanks to v.net modules, you can easily calculate the shortest path
between a set of nodes on the network or even compute the isochrone
map from a set of
central points. you can also easily solve the complex travelling
salesman
problem
from a network and a set of travel nodes.

v.net algorithms often use a line vector layer (for the network) and a
point layer which represents the nodes you want to use for the
computation. Be sure to use a true graph line vector layer for the
network layer (edges need to be connected on vertex without intersection
between edges) to avoid problems. You can also use any network layer
attribute for cost calculation (the content of the attribute is used to
calculate the travel cost of the edge).

Here is a quick summary of the different algorithms that have been
included into Processing:

v.net.alloc: Allocates subnets from nearest centres.

v.net.allpairs: Computes the shortest path between all pairs of nodes
in the network.

QgsFeatureRequest now supports setting a maximum limit for the number
of features returned. In many cases this limit is passed to the
provider, resulting in significant performance gains when only a set
number of features are required.

Additionally, QgsFeatureRequest now supports setting ordering for
returned features. Again, in many cases this ordering is delegated to
the provider so that it is performed “server side” for optimal
performance.

`STARTINDEX is standard in WFS 2.0, but it’s an extension for WFS
1.0 implemented in QGIS Server.

STARTINDEX can be used to skip some features in the result set and
in combination with MAXFEATURES provides for the ability to use WFS
GetFeature to page through results. Note that STARTINDEX=0 means
start with the first feature, skipping none.

A number of elements have both a Name and a Title. The Name is a text
string used for machine-to-machine communication while the Title is for the
benefit of humans. For example, a dataset might have the descriptive Title
Maximum Atmospheric Temperature and be requested using the abbreviated Name
ATMAX.

Users can already set a title for layers and project. OpenGeospatial Web
Services, OWS (WMS, WFS, WCS), name is based on the name used in the layer
tree. This name is more a label for humans than a name for
machine-to-machine communication.

To add the capability for users to define Name as a text string for
machine-to-machine communication, this feature adds:

short name line edits to layer properties

WMS data dialog to layer tree group (short name, title, abstract)

short name line edits to project properties

add a regexp validator “^[A-Za-z][A-Za-z0-9._-]*” to short name
line edit accessible through a static method

add a TreeName element in the fullProjectSettings

If a short name has been set for layers, groups and project it is used
by QGIS Sever as the layer name.

This adds a configuration interface and renderer that makes it easy to
put all the pieces together which are required to get a 2.5D effect.

It allows for configuring some of the styling and is meant to create an
easy-to-use setup.

Since every part of the system is built around QGIS’ internal rendering
and symbology engine, there is much to fine tune. To get all the
possibilities, just change the renderer to a graduated, categorized or
single symbol renderer upon creation and you will find full access to
improve the style to your needs.

When features are required to be rendered in a particular order, this
can be specified by using an arbitrary expression.

This can be configured in the layer’s symbology configuration dialog and
can be a simple field or a complex expression.

It also provides control over ascending or descending order as well as
whether NULLs are first or last.

If possible, the request will be sent to the database (this depends on
the complexity of the expression as well as the provider for the layer).
If it is not possible to send the request to the database, the ordering
will be performed on the local machine.

This is used by the 2.5D renderer to render features based on their
distance from the “camera”.

This adds a new “edit symbol” item to the right-click menu for a
renderer child legend item (eg categories for the categorised renderer).
Selecting it opens a symbol editor dialog which allows for directly
editing the class’s symbol. It’s much faster than opening the layer
properties and going through the style tab. You can also double-click on
a child item to open the symbol editor immediately.